WordPress editors and page builders in test: comparison of the 7 best visual site builders

The life of a website operator is hard enough. They don’t have to waste a lot of time to make blog posts and pages “beautiful” with HTML and CSS. For some time now, there have been a number of so-called WordPress page builders. These are plugins that allow you to create very nice, modern designs and layouts for your own pages in no time. They make adding and preparing content a breeze – at least compared to the standard WordPress editor. That’s why page builders have established themselves as one of the most popular WordPress plugin categories in recent years. This article shows you the advantages and disadvantages of the seven most popular page builders:

What is a WordPress PageBuilder and what does it do for me?

A PageBuilder, literally translated “page builder”, is a tool that helps to design web pages without requiring programming knowledge of HTML, CSS or JavaScript. Such tools exceed the standard functionality of the standard editor, which has hardly changed in more than 10 years. PageBuilders with frontend functionality additionally give the user the possibility of independent real-time control over every single element of a page or site. This is also often called WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get).

In 2018 WordPress 5.0 finally replaced the standard editor with the Gutenberg editor. The new editor represents a quantum leap towards easier layout work. But the project is still young and compared to the PageBuilders the new editor has a lot of potential for expansion. Below is an assessment. As there is a lot going on in terms of Gutenberg-ready themes at the moment, we will update this article permanently!

Standardeditor vs. PageBuilder

If it’s just simple text with pictures and occasional videos that can be displayed in a single column, then there is really no need for a special “builder”. However, if you have more creative needs, you will surely have more fun with one of the presented plugins with much more advanced functions. For example, what fundamentally distinguishes the Page Builder from the standard editor is the option to structure content in rows and columns. This allows a variety of modern designs.

In addition, most page builder plugins offer a variety of functions to freely design the appearance of the layout boxes: different backgrounds, parallax effects, individual CSS instructions and much more.

More advantages of the PageBuilder:

• There are often templates for particularly popular layout elements, e.g. for portrait images, galleries, sliders, countdown elements (x days to), animations, feature tables, etc. One or two clicks and the plugin conjures up a finished element that the user only has to fill with his own content.
• No HTML, CSS or even JavaScript knowledge is required.
• Click, drag and drop – that’s all you need to know when using page builders. Just real drag’n’drop.
• With the visual WP PageBuilders, this even happens in real time on the page that the user is currently creating. So you see the result immediately and don’t have to save and click on “Preview”.
• Professional templates allow a very fast creation process.
• In the past, this often had to be done by a web designer, which of course involved additional costs.

However, where there is light, there is also shadow.

Here are some disadvantages that need to be considered:

• Page builders require configuration work. They are comprehensive tools with many options. They want to be set up correctly and this requires a small investment of time in the beginning.
• To achieve this high level of design convenience, page builders generate relatively complex code. This is necessary. But it also means that the source code becomes a bit bloated and the loading time can be reduced. Only a few page builders advertise generating particularly lean code. This is especially important from an SEO point of view.
• Exactly for the same reason: Complex code can lead to annoying bugs here and there, which require that something has to be recreated in a time-consuming way (always make diligent backups!).
• If you want to change the page builder, you will most likely have to rebuild all pages. Among each other these are mostly not compatible. In other words: Once you have decided, you are fixed.
• Most page builders cannot automatically convert existing content due to specific layout instructions.
• Compared to the normal editor, page builders sometimes feel very slow and cumbersome. Simple actions in the frontend editor take several seconds, while in the backend they take only a fraction of a second.
• Errors in the software may lead to problems on your own website. You can sneak into any software. However, if they occur in WordPress itself, the probability that an update will clean them up may be slightly higher.

Overall, the advantages clearly outweigh the disadvantages for most users. Those who use WordPress professionally and do not want to be dependent on external designers for the layout, cannot avoid them anyway.

Frontend- vs. Backend-Builder

Historically, the first page builders tried to offer different layout variants visually via the backend, i.e. the WordPress editor. However, this approach is considered obsolete in terms of UInterface. Some builders still offer this model, but it is certainly on the sidelines. Even though this form of page editing can be more efficient, because the layout of a page or post is not “in the way” when editing. The future belongs to frontend editors, which allow editing the layout on the page itself and in real time.

Which theme is ideal for the WordPress Page Builder?

Those who are intensively involved with page builders will sooner or later realize that in the end, choosing a suitable theme can still take hours and hours of time. The standard themes in WordPress and many other themes just don’t work very well. This is because most themes make too many decisions about the look of the final website. If you want to design your page completely with a WordPress page builder, you should use an optimized PageBuilder theme – depending on the desired page builder. These are specially designed for designing with a WYSIWYG editor and bring along even little code and styling.

Elementor has a good solution with its “Hello” theme. In short, this theme is reduced to the bare essentials, so that the templates from the page builder look as displayed and fit perfectly into the layout. Other builders simply overwrite any theme and take full control. The Beaver Builder wants you to pay 100 USD more to get an ideal theme. For our videos we have installed the plugin Blank Slate. It is free and allows you to start with every new page without any layout!

Recommendation: The Page Builder Framework

The new Page Builder Framework Theme is very easy to customize. So you can design all areas outside of the content, i.e. your menu, the colors, etc. with the integrated WordPress Customizer and the remaining page elements with the Page Builder.

The Page Builder Framework Theme can be downloaded for free in its simplest standard version, but for a meaningful use it must be extended with the Premium Plugin for 58 USD annually or 248 USD once. The theme then works excellently with elementor, the beaverbuilder, Brizy, divi, Visual Composer and SiteOrigin PageBuilder.

So if you are in love with one of the many page builders, I would indeed recommend the Page Builder Framework Theme. It allows you to create as many websites as you want and control every aspect of your visual design – quickly, easily and without any programming knowledge!

And now it’s time for the preserves! The 7 best WordPress page builders in comparison:

The market of WordPress page builders is currently hardly manageable. There are over 20 of them. All of them have their sweetspot and some can be left out. That’s why we have made a preselection of the best and most popular editors, which should leave nothing to be desired for most wordpressers.

Elementor

Elementor is a relative newcomer among WordPress page builders, around which a huge community has formed in a short time. This is probably due to the successful user interface, the strong functional range and a free version that is already sufficient for most users. If you are a cost-conscious blogger with a moderate need for features, here is a free way to make your own WordPress pages beautiful!

Elementor offers animations, gradient backgrounds, effects for headlines and more. It also includes a large number of professionally designed templates and hundreds of professional enhancements. The free version allows full optimization for mobile. In addition, there is support for maintenance mode, under-construction pages, landing pages and more.

Advantages and functions of the Elementor-Page-Builder

• What sets Elementor apart from the competition are its layout features. No other plugin has so many setting options here. For example, sections can easily be adjusted to screen height.
• The standard version already contains nearly 30 elements, including headlines, images, videos, buttons, maps, galleries, carousels, testimonials, counters, progress bars and many more.

• In the Pro versions there are more than 20 additional elements. You will also find price lists & tables, forms, menus, animated headlines, Facebook buttons and comments and much more.

• There are also many other elements that allow the use in different themes. There are also elements for WooCommerce. So there is nothing against using Elementor in e-commerce projects.
• A special feature of Elementor is the “Hello” theme. It’s a simple theme that resets all standard layout instructions and thus offers an optimal starting point for your own designs. In our opinion, the theme builder alone makes it worth buying the Pro version. The included Elementor demo video shows how easy it is to set up all necessary page types directly in the theme builder and integrate them into the website via an elegant set of rules (Conditions).
• Elementor is open source and therefore source code adjustments are possible. This plays a role for many, especially technically experienced users, but also for those who still employ a developer for the website.
• When Elementor is disabled, the editor leaves no proprietary code snippets behind. This is very good and otherwise found in very few plugins.

New: Reach your goal faster with Elementor Templates!

One of the biggest advantages of the new version of Elementor is the ability to use so-called Elementor templates. These are virtually ready-made page templates that can be imported into any website.

Envato, the world’s largest marketplace for WordPress themes, now also offers a whole range of professional Elementor template kits. These kits are a collection of similarly designed templates, stock photos and graphics that are designed to be shared on a website and therefore automatically fit together perfectly.

This allows you to build an entire website super fast and easy. Best of all, from photos and videos to backgrounds and fonts, the template kits already include all media licenses!

Other Pro features that make the purchase worthwhile:

• With the Pop-up Builder you can create pop-ups that can be used, for example, to query e-mail addresses.
• The visual form generator allows you to create your own forms.
• Dynamic content can be used within the page builder.
• There are animations, parallax & mouse effects for interactive and moving content.

Disadvantages of the Elementor-Page-Builders

• In the past, Elementor struggled with slight layout differences from time to time: Elements that look slightly different in Elementor than in the preview. This can be frustrating when working as a developer.
• It is not possible to turn off Elementor to see the final layout of a page. It is only possible to return to the backend or to preview on a new page. This works better and much more intuitive, e.g. in Beaver Builder.

The costs & specials

The price for Elementor is graduated as follows:

• 49 USD per year for one website
• 99 USD annually for up to three websites
• 199 USD annually for up to 1,000 websites

That’s what there is for:

• 30-day money back guarantee
• Those who do not renew their license annually can continue to use Elementor, but will not benefit from updates, support and new features.
• Those who want to upgrade later only have to pay the difference to the desired package.

Our evaluation

All in all, Elementor seems to be ahead of the pack when it comes to features. Especially the layout design is incredibly flexible. But the page builder is a bit more buggy. But it can only be a matter of time until everything works here. Because of the free version, everyone can try out exactly if he is affected by the bugs. Not everyone necessarily likes the software with the most features. So it is a matter of testing anyway.

Via our link you can try out Elementor →

WPBakery Page Builder (formerly Visual Composer)

The page builder of WPBakery brings many years of product experience – he was one of the first visual WordPress editors. It has an enormous range of functions, but is limited to editing pages! If you also want to edit the rest of the website with the visual drag and drop editor, you need the Visual Composer. Background: The company has renamed the editor, which specializes in editing pages, to “WPBakery Page Builder” and created a brand new editor called Visual Composer, which can be used to edit the entire website including headers and footers.

Advantages and features of WPBakery Page Builder

• The Builder is mobile-first, i.e. very strongly focused on mobile sites. Layouts are created with a view to the fact that most visitors access the page via smartphone. Only from there the layout is optimized or extended for larger displays.
• Due to the age of the plugin there are integrations with pretty much every major third party plugin. Where other editors rely on shortcuts, WPBakery shines with a graphical interface. There are over 250 integrations.
• WPBakery is committed to ensuring that the page builder works with every theme. This is probably because the plugin internally displays everything via shortcodes and inserts a lot of code into the content field. On the one hand this may be an advantage, but on the other hand (see disadvantages) it is not.
• There is a large selection of design templates that the user can download.
• The Plugin offers an extensive number of content elements for almost any use case.

Disadvantages of the WPBakery Page Builder

• The live editor is sometimes noticeably slower than its competitors. Also, you must always click “Save” before a live change is displayed on the page, e.g. when embedding a background graphic for an element. The need to always click “Save” to get a preview is very tiring in the long run.
• The interface sometimes feels overloaded and certain controls are covered by others.
• Other controls are completely out of place, for example the famous image size selection for the images in a picture gallery. Here the user does not select the size of the images in a dropbox, which for example has “large”, “medium”, “small” or “thumbnail” to choose from – no, the tool requires the user to type the word “thumbnail” into a simple text box! This is by far not the only shortcoming of the user interface.
• Clicking is fun, but sometimes keys are faster. When inserting elements, a large window opens from which a suitable module can be selected. If you want to close the window again, for example because of a wrong click, you have to click on the X. The ESC key or a click next to the window will not work.
• It is only possible with some tricks to define a row that extends over the entire width and then, for example, contains a column in the middle that can be filled with content. This makes it impossible to create modern landing pages. This is also the main reason why we did not recreate the surf school with WPBakery.
• There are many other small shortcomings, which we won’t list all here. At least there is hope that the developers will get rid of many of them. With such an old product, however, the question arises as to why this hasn’t already happened. Maybe it is also due to the architecture of the plugin, which cannot be changed easily without jeopardizing the compatibility to existing sites.

The costs & specials

The price for the WPBakery Page Builder is graduated as follows

• 45 USD one-time fee for the use on one domain
• 245 USD one-time fee for use in a custom SaaS application (e.g. for theme developers)

For that you get:

• free updates
• premium support
• Access to all templates

Our evaluation

At this point in time, we cannot really recommend WPBakery, even though it offers many advantages. What really bothers us most is the constant need to save. If you can overlook this, you should take a closer look at the plugin. Maybe flexibility in the integration is more important.

Via our link you can try out WPBakery Page Builder →

Visual Composer Site Builder

This is not a fairy tale: The Visual Composer was once a page builder. However, this was renamed to the WPBakery Page Builder. Then the Visual Composer was extended to a site builder.

The Visual Composer Site Builder is a modern plugin for WYSIWYG creation of pages and posts. You can also use it to create themes for pages and elements/blocks. A complete feature list of the plugin can be found on the manufacturer’s site.

Advantages of Visual Composer Site Builder

• After a short training in the Row/Column Layout Builder, even modern layouts are easily possible.
  For some, it may be an advantage that the Visual Composer Site Builder has a long history. It was one of the first builders ever.
• Text and the layout can be edited directly on the page. This feels very fast compared to WPBakery, which first creates a roundtrip to the backend with every click.
• The Visual Composer Hub offers numerous extensions and add-ons for the Site Builder.

• There are over 100 content elements alone for the design of the most diverse layouts.
• The Visual Composer is not stingy with layouts either. There are over 100 of them
• The user interface is customizable. It can be freely suspended or docked to one side.
• The theme builder is certainly a unique selling point of the premium version. It can be used to create complete layouts for entire pages or the individual components (headers, footers, sidebars, etc.)
• Parallax, background videos, gradients and other popular effects are handled by the plugin without any problems
• Visual Composer advertises with a comprehensive developer API.

Disadvantages of the Visual Composer Site Builder

• The Visual Composer Site Builder sometimes seems to have got stuck in the past, according to our own extensive tests (see the surf school video). For example, the size of an image is determined by a word that has to be entered in a text field. It is not possible to specify an exact pixel size.
• When editing text directly on the page, the Visual Composer darkens everything but the text. This is probably supposed to help, but it rather irritated us, because it feels like the rest of the features are not usable anymore. Only one click leads out of this mode.
• Undo/Redo does not work reliably, if at all. To list this as a feature is quite brave.
• The Visual Composer Hub is offered as a special feature. But it is not that special. Other plugins provide most of the content elements directly and you don’t have to download them in a “hub” first.
• The plugin is only available in the subscription model.

The costs & specials

The price for Visual Composer Site Builder is graduated as follows:

• 59 USD per year for a single site license
• 149 USD annually for three website licenses
• 349 USD annually for any number of website licenses

From the second year on there is a discount of 40%.
Within 15 days there is a 100% money-back guarantee.

Our evaluation

The Visual Composer has its own fan base. It is still very popular. The spin-off to the WPBakery Page Builder has certainly done a good job. The new interface feels modern and future-proof. Even if the Visual Composer Site Builder would not be our first choice, you have to admit that some features are really convincing, e.g. the gallery function but also the handling of rows and columns is very easy. If you can ignore the old-fashioned functions, Visual Composer Site Builder is a plugin that allows you to create modern layouts in no time at all – provided that you are thoroughly trained. The regular updates let us hope that the situation will continue to improve in the future.

Via our link you can try out Visual Composer Site Builder →

DiviBuilder

The DiviBuilder is stylish and has an enormous range of functions. It shines above all with numerous content elements and a largely intuitive user interface.

Divi-Page Builder advantages and features

• Probably the biggest advantage with Divi is the fact that the manufacturer “Elegant Themes” together with the page builder offers over 110 complete website themes in the package. In addition, there are over 880 designed page layouts (designs), many of them visually very appealing.
• Especially cool is the possibility to edit the text directly on the page. This is not like opening a box that the user fills out and closes with a click on “Save” before the text appears on the page. No, the text on the page itself can be edited. Even copy and paste is possible.
• The wireframe mode can also be an extremely useful feature. Those who have worked with a page builder know how fiddly these can be. Sometimes it is hardly possible to touch an element in order to paste it at the right place between two other elements. The elements are constantly flitting back and forth, and you don’t know when exactly to let go. This is where the wireframe mode comes in handy, allowing you to put the different content elements into a different view. Inserting and moving the elements is much easier in this mode.
• A special feature: The Divi-Theme has a built-in A/B testing. This allows you to test different layouts and content (e.g. headlines).

Disadvantages of the Divi-Page Builder

• Pages with few elements feel very nimble to use. However, as soon as the number of elements on the page increases, the handling slows down noticeably.
• Divi’s own CSS is truly enormous. There are overriding layout instructions for most elements, often more than a dozen lines long. So if you want to decide for yourself how something has to look like, you have to fox your way deep into the defaults. Divi simply doesn’t want users to mess with the design themselves. On the one hand, that’s not so bad, but it can become a bigger problem if you want to use a third-party plugin (e.g. WooCommerce or Gravity Forms). Here it can happen that extensive “correction work” becomes necessary. This can be time consuming and expensive.
• Although Divi offers the ability to apply filters to images, sometimes extremely simple options are undetectable, such as the number of columns in an image gallery.
• Like many other page builders, Divi uses a shortcode parser internally. This becomes evident when you disable Divi. Because then complex pages are full of a mess of shortcodes that nobody can see through.

The costs & specials

The price for the Divi-Page-Builder is graduated as follows:

• 89 USD per user per year for all themes and plugins!
• 249 USD once and lifetime access to everything. No subscription.

But you get:

• unlimited number of websites
• over 110 website layouts and over 880 design elements
• as a bonus a social sharing plugin and a pop-up designer

Our evaluation

Divi is very attractive at first sight. The devil is here, as so often, in the details. If you want to get the partly really appealing templates and design templates of Elegant Themes, Divi is certainly a good decision. Especially if the pages to be created are not very extensive or often need to be revised. It should be considered here that problems with the builder may only become visible when a tweak is really necessary or an external module should be used. Here the thoroughly pretty Divi can quickly turn against you.

Via our link you can try out Divi →

The Beaver Builder

The Beaver Builder is best known for its reliability. The feature selection is limited compared to most other builders. However, everything necessary can be done with the Beaver Builder. But sometimes you have to look twice before you find the feature.

Advantages and functions of the Beaver Builder

• The frontend mode is simple and clear. Switching between edit mode and preview works in real-time.
• Changes to content and styling options are not on the page itself (inline) but in a separate box, but are displayed (almost) in real time on the page.
• Layout instructions are set via clearly structured HTML and CSS. Beaver Builder does not generate shortcodes.
• If Beaver Builder is turned off, a clearly structured HTML framework remains. This makes later processing much easier (- should this ever be necessary).
• BB frees the user from choosing a theme based on a design. It allows the easy creation of own designs.
• The developers work with great speed to improve the plugin (better UI, better performance etc.) and not – like other plugin producers – only to add eye-candy.
• There is a large active and passionate developer community around Beaver Builder. This is important if something goes wrong or the website owner wants to find a developer to add additional functionality to his own website.

Disadvantages of the Beaver Builder

• The inline editor is the only part of the software that is sometimes bitchy.
• Beaver Builder has by far the fewest templates for content elements among all WordPress Page Builder plugins. This seems to be a conscious decision of the manufacturers. Often it is possible to fulfill one’s own wishes, but choosing the right module is a bit more difficult, because the icons or the description do not necessarily correspond to the industry standard.
• There is no Undo for layout changes. Sometimes this means having to start from scratch.
• To really get the most flexibility in layout, it is recommended to purchase the “Beaver Builder Theme” together with the plugin. For a total of 199 USD you really have everything you need from one manufacturer. Compared to other plugins this is rather expensive.

The costs & specials

The price of the Beaver Builder is graduated as follows:

• 99 USD once for one license and unlimited installations
• 199 USD once for the “Beaver Builder Theme” and the option to use multisite
• 399 USD one-time payment for agencies that want additional whitelabelling.

After one year, however, you must renew to receive updates. The renewal costs 40% less.

Our evaluation

We give the Beaver Builder a clear recommendation – simply because of the feeling that comes with working with BB. Even more complex layouts can be created easily. Even if the Builder is sometimes not 100% intuitive, the user interface almost always offers a suitable solution after an appropriate training period. If the team around this Page Builder now builds in even more templates for content elements and gets minor problems in using the editors under control, then the Beaver Builder would probably be the best WordPress Page Builder.

Via our link you can try out Beaver Builder →

Brizy-Page-Builder

Brizy is a relatively new and fast WordPress page builder. Especially eye-catching are the many professionally designed templates and designs.

The advantages and functions of Brizy

• Right from the first use, it becomes clear how well the visual editing of page elements works. The user works directly on the page. This works very reliably and quickly. All page builders should deliver this experience.
• The Brizy templates are really worth seeing. For each use case (contact, maps, features, testimonials etc.) there is a good selection of professional layouts. There are also new ones being added all the time.
• Responsive layout is integrated from scratch.
• Creating your own column-based layouts is very easy.
• Brizy Pro allows you to create headers and footers, so Brizy is more than just a page builder, just like the new Visual Composer.
• A role-based system allows you to limit the rights when editing a page. A feature that can play a role for larger teams.
• Brizy does not use any shortcodes, which can make switching to another platform much easier.
• Global Blocks allow content elements once created to be saved so that they can be included on other pages. The highlight: When a global block is changed, these changes are also visible on all pages on which this global block is included.
• Undo/Redo works quite well. Not every builder has that.
• Automatic saving works similar to Google Docs and nobody else has it either.
• There is a special interface for reordering blocks, which makes moving them a bit easier.

The disadvantages of Brizy

• The project is quite new. Many core features have to be extended to reach the level of the established page builders. But the Brizy team is constantly releasing new features and improvements.
• The documentation is not really intoxicating. There are, probably because of the novelty, simply not so many tutorials yet.
• Very unusual customer support via Github. Even if you are not a developer, you have to create an account there first and then create tickets.

The costs & specials

The price of Brizy is graduated as follows:

• 49 USD annually for 3 sites
• 99 USD annually for unlimited sites
• 299 USD one-time fee for lifetime updates and support

Brizy has launched a still quite young cloud service, which makes it possible to design pages with Brizy even without WordPress. With this, Brizy competes with Squarespace, whereby it is more about creating individual pages in order to use them for marketing products and services. In the subscription brizy.cloud is currently still included for free. Those who only want to use the cloud service pay extra.

Our evaluation

Brizy has enormous potential as an industry newcomer. Working with the surface is simply fun. If the team continues to work on product quality as before, Elementor, Oxygen and Beaver Builder will soon have serious competition. The editor feels very good and is definitely worth a test.

Via our link you can try out Brizy →

The Oxygen-Builder

The Oxygen Builder is most comparable to Brizy, even if the Builder is a few years older. Content and layouts are created live on the site. The selection of templates and designs is also comparable. However, Oxygen is already a bit more mature than Brizy.

Advantages and functions of Oxygen

• Oxygen has an intuitive drag and drop interface. Entire page layouts can be created in no time. Even templates for individual page elements are available.
• The Builder also provides good support for coders working with JavaScript, HTML, PHP and CSS.
• Oxygen currently has an attractive pricing model. The customer pays only once and gets lifetime updates and support.
• The outline is more powerful than in Brizy.
• The handling of Oxygen is really smooth.

Disadvantages of Oxygen

• Unlike most page builders Oxygen is more focused on the developer. But most of the tasks can also be done as non-developer.
• The page builder generates a lot of shortcode garbage that is annoying when moving.
• It remains to be seen how portable the pricing model is. Under certain circumstances, it could get the provider into trouble. This is no help to anyone either.

The costs & specials

The pricing model of Oxygen is quite simple: For 99 USD one-time fee you get lifetime support and updates. There is also a 60-day money back guarantee so you can just try Oxygen.

Our evaluation

If you look at Brizy and Oxygen at the same time, you’ll start to wonder. Both page builders are easy to use and under the hood they are quite powerful. If you look at one, you should also check out the other one. In the end it is a matter of taste.

Via our link you can try out Oxygen →

Page Builder from SiteOrigin

We somehow missed the free Page Builder from SiteOrigin during our first research. The popular page builder plugin for WordPress was downloaded more than a million times. It makes it relatively easy to create responsive and column-based content. You place widgets you already know from the WordPress backend into predefined areas. The Page Builder works with standard WordPress widgets, so that you can choose from a very large number of existing elements, or add additional widgets using plugins. The Premium version contains many useful and useful widgets:

The Page Builder from SiteOrigin works basically with any theme. Thanks to the Page Builder’s simple drag-and-drop function, there is no need to write a single line of code. The Page Builder generates all the code for the display, but of course there can be some overlapping CSS. Therefore we recommend to use one of the free themes or the Premium Themes from SiteOrigin!

By using line and widget styles, you can visually customize your own content and make it unique. Properties such as spacing, background colors and column spacing can also be specifically adapted or redesigned with your own CSS code.

The costs & specials

The annual subscription starts at 29 USD for one website, up to 5 websites cost 49 USD and the developer license for 99 USD is then valid for an unlimited number of websites. An active license allows access to premium email support and all plugin updates. The license can of course be cancelled at any time. Very good is: SiteOrigin offers a 60-day money back guarantee on all annual and one-time packages.

Our evaluation

Especially the SiteOrigin Premium version contains all the elements you need on a normal website and can be a great alternative to build your website. The Page Builder supports live editing which allows you to see content and edit widgets in real time. With one of the free themes or a premium theme from SiteOrigin you can create your page very fast and professional.

Via our link you can try SiteOrigin →

Gutenberg Editor (free)

Gutenberg is the current WordPress editor, which replaced the old-fashioned standard editor in the backend with version 5.0. Since the editor is currently still limited to the backend, it does not really compete with the frontend page builders we tested here. The question is rather whether the introduction of Gutenberg makes it obsolete to get a page builder today.

From our point of view, we can clearly deny this at the moment. Gutenberg is not yet able to turn the world of frontend editors upside down. This has three main reasons:

1. Gutenberg has columns, but they are still relatively rudimentary in their functionality.
2. Gutenberg currently has no rows that allow to place columns in them – at least not without appropriate shortcode plugins. But with the great toolset extension you can still create individual layouts and even your own post types without any programming effort.
3. Furthermore, Gutenberg is not to be found in the frontend, i.e. on the page itself. It is implemented exclusively in the admin panel as backend editor. So he will probably not support live editing of elements on a page in the future.

It could be that this will change sometime in the future. The WordPress roadmap foresees a deeper integration of Gutenberg for header, footer and sidebar, but that’s all in the stars at the moment. Until then, there is no way around a proper WordPress page builder. At least not for website operators who have higher demands on layout and content presentation and do not want to be limited to fixed templates.

Conclusion: Which page builder is the best for me?

Everyone would like to know that. However, this question cannot be answered generally and equally for everyone. Even if after a test everyone will have their own favorite, this does not mean that this page builder is the best for everyone. It is time to try it out. And here we can give the following tip: Just test the following four page builders in this order and see what you can do best!

The best page builders 2020

• Free of charge: Gutenberg (with the right theme!)
• Freemium: Elementor (Can do everything)
• Premium: Brizy (super fast and chic)

It is guaranteed that everyone will find his page builder.

We hope you enjoy testing 🙂